So after (probably) seeing the end of the Leviathan DLC in GBs video (or playing it), I have one question: If this had been in the game from the beginning, do you think the reaction to the end would have been less...well, hostile? If you hated the ending, do you think the revelations (and suggestions) from the DLC would have changed your opinion on the ending?

I personally hated the original ending (not in a "bioware raped my childhood!" kinda way and more in a "well, that was pretty lame and stupid" kinda way but I also think the game itself was kinda boring and lame) and I think I would have been fine with the (extended) ending and the stuff you learn in Leviathan. I still think the "choose a gate" stuff is stupid but at least the Starchild wouldn't have come out of nowhere as it did originally.

My opinion: Ending is fine, DLC enhances backstory but not necessary.

Moving on.

Think it would need the Extended Cut DLC as well, but yes I think it would have improved the ending. My problem was the lack of forshadowing and the fact that it was so fragmented.

Leviathan provided a component I felt was missing, the mystery to follow and uncover. I still don't "like" the ending, but I'm fine with it now that I see it in the context of the Extended Cut and Leviathan.

That said, I kinda wish I could play the game like Brad did.

As I've said in another thread. Brad hit the nail on the head when he said that that dlc prepares you for the end and I will fully agree to that.

I think it's been pretty much confirmed that Leviathan and the addition of the EC with an already present Javik would have made the game drastically better. People who refuse to accept just how much of a difference those things can make can look at Brad's number 1 spot of ME3 and its omission on other people's list.

I kept waiting to get the achievement for discovering an enemy's monstrous origin, which I assumed was the Reapers. Then I realized it was just about the banshees. Would've been more satisfying if that's what Leviathan was.

Oh well!

Yes.

No, not really. Starchild's random appearance was only a small part of my dislike of the ending.

it would have made the whole thing better,, but i think people would stil get upset about the ending whether this was in or not.

particularly the final cutscene and the lack of a suicide option.

@Turambar said:

No, not really. Starchild's random appearance was only a small part of my dislike of the ending.

For me yes, still wouldn't be the best it could have been though

It would have served as adequate foreshadowing, if nothing else.

There was no saving that atrocious ending.

@Galiant said:

My opinion: Ending is fine, DLC enhances backstory but not necessary. Moving on.

I agree. Leviathan and From Ashes add some nice color to the lore in general, but the scant bits of new information they provide are completely immaterial to the plot of ME3. Anyone who thinks that Leviathan was a revelation clearly wasn't paying attention because everything you learn in that DLC was already explicitly stated or heavily implied by the original ending.

It would have helped a bit but I think Jeff was right when he said that Bioware probably wrote Leviathan after the fact.

@Abendlaender said:

So after (probably) seeing the end of the Leviathan DLC in GBs video (or playing it), I have one question: If this had been in the game from the beginning, do you think the reaction to the end would have been less...well, hostile? If you hated the ending, do you think the revelations (and suggestions) from the DLC would have changed your opinion on the ending?

I personally hated the original ending (not in a "bioware raped my childhood!" kinda way and more in a "well, that was pretty lame and stupid" kinda way but I also think the game itself was kinda boring and lame) and I think I would have been fine with the (extended) ending and the stuff you learn in Leviathan. I still think the "choose a gate" stuff is stupid but at least the Starchild wouldn't have come out of nowhere as it did originally.

The problem with the ending I had was that I didn't even know it was actually happening (I thought it was a weird Shepard dream or something). There were so many things which seemed off.

For example seeing the sgt bloke, magically appear near the illusive man, when there was no other path. The huge building was weird as well. And the child came out of no where. I thought it could not have been that bad surely for it to actually be the real story.... but sadly it was :(

How did shepard even get to the high level?

The fact that Leviathan and From Ashes were dlc, when they should have been in the main game, is fucking gross. The ending was, and is, completely unsatisfying.

I keep forgetting From Ashes was paid DLC

Probably not, I think my biggest problem was how unsatisfying any of the choices were, especially with the original ending where you don't even get to find out exactly what it is you just did.

If anything I probably would have been angry that "Just kill the reapers" wasn't an option, since Leviathan apparently introduces giant space squids that can kill reapers with their thoughts.

I guess so but I didn't have a problem with the original ending as it left you with questions. I found the extended dlc ending unnesscessary.

Well, the choices are still super dumb, especially the synthesis one.

I never played the updated ending since I felt like the original gave me what I needed in terms of an explanation of what was happening.

That said, the Leviathan quick look was interesting from the perspective of adding more context to the overall lore, even if it felt a bit like an exposition-dump.

I think the extended cut on its own gives you more context for the star child. I didn't play leviathan, but my first experience with the game involved the ec, and I felt like he was adequately explained. I don't think the peoples real gripe with this game is the star child, I think it's the final decision sort of making the previous choices feel irrelevant.

Honestly I thought the ending was kind of cool, but I was braced for the worst shit ever, had the extended cut, and didn't really care about the games before as much as everyone else.

It explained more, but I kind of got the gist of it during the end anyway. It would of easily been my GOTY with it though, really great DLC. That and Javic on the disc would of been perfect, but EA had to be EA. Instead of making sure ME ended on a real high note they rushed it out and kept back DLC.

@Abendlaender said:

So after (probably) seeing the end of the Leviathan DLC in GBs video (or playing it), I have one question: If this had been in the game from the beginning, do you think the reaction to the end would have been less...well, hostile? If you hated the ending, do you think the revelations (and suggestions) from the DLC would have changed your opinion on the ending?

I personally hated the original ending (not in a "bioware raped my childhood!" kinda way and more in a "well, that was pretty lame and stupid" kinda way but I also think the game itself was kinda boring and lame) and I think I would have been fine with the (extended) ending and the stuff you learn in Leviathan. I still think the "choose a gate" stuff is stupid but at least the Starchild wouldn't have come out of nowhere as it did originally.

I think it would of perhaps made it slightly more palatable, however the actual choices themselves are still kind of lame (especially synthesis)

Also there's other aspects of ME3 that make it less than ideal overall vs the first and second games in terms of narrative railroading and godawfulness (Kai Leng, Diane Allers, etc, etc)

I do think Leviathan, From Ashes, and the EC definitely improve the ending, but I also think they wouldn't have made that big of a difference in the reaction. It's the end of a trilogy. There's inevitably going to be a backlash.

The structural problems with the game and story just in Mass Effect 3 are bigger than the DLC "fixes".

Original Ending is fine 
Original Ending + Leviathan would have been ideal 
Extended Ending is a turd that should have never been made and Bioware should have never ever buckled under retarded fans' demands.

I didn't feel like the ending was out of no where, and that the star child didn't make sense. Really when you look back at the entire series together, they choreographed quite plainly the whole move toward gestalt consciousness that the synthesis ending lead to, which I assume was the ending Bioware intended most people to take. Yeah for me the writing was on the wall since 2 that something like this would happen.

Right because it was pretty obvious from the start that a device no one knew about needed to be built and stuck onto the Citadel to make a star child pop out of the Citadel and give you two absurd choices while downplaying the most satisfying one. :)

It certainly would have enhanced it and it definitely should have been in the retail release. You don't lock away super important lore like that behind paid DLC.

@warxsnake said:

Original Ending is fine Original Ending + Leviathan would have been ideal Extended Ending is a turd that should have never been made and Bioware should have never ever buckled under retarded fans' demands.

Both the EC & Leviathan effectively round out the story and provide more context. If it wasn't for the backlash we probably wouldn't have gotten Leviathan at all (with it's massive reaper info dump) but likely something more akin to Omega.

Leviathan probably should've been the whole subplot to ME3, not the Cerberus thing. That would've made it better.

@warxsnake said:

Original Ending is fine Original Ending + Leviathan would have been ideal Extended Ending is a turd that should have never been made and Bioware should have never ever buckled under retarded fans' demands.

Both the EC & Leviathan effectively round out the story and provide more context. If it wasn't for the backlash we probably wouldn't have gotten Leviathan at all (with it's massive reaper info dump) but likely something more akin to Omega.

@warxsnake said:

@Kadayi said:

@warxsnake said:

Original Ending is fine Original Ending + Leviathan would have been ideal Extended Ending is a turd that should have never been made and Bioware should have never ever buckled under retarded fans' demands.

Both the EC & Leviathan effectively round out the story and provide more context. If it wasn't for the backlash we probably wouldn't have gotten Leviathan at all (with it's massive reaper info dump) but likely something more akin to Omega.

Errrrm no Leviathan would have released the way it has regardless of fan feedback. You can't create DLC like that, from scratch, in a couple of months; there's tons of work that goes into that type of DLC (its not just a weapons or skins pack). Bioware most certainly did not go "oh shit, some assholes on reddit are angry, here's a few million dollars, lets hire everybody again, testers, lighting artists, modelers, animators, level designers, VO actors, let's come up with new vehicles and gameplay, turn on the mocap studio and let's do this DLC" game development does not work like that, if you think that's how it happened, you need to do some more research into game development. DLC (in this case extension DLC, again, not weapon or skin packs) usually gets started before a game is released, around the end of beta phase and when the game is in cert submission, when the game is content-complete as it gives the DLC team enough of a buffer to work and release a few months after the release of the core game. The only thing created as a result of idiot fans is the reworked ending, because its something easy to redo/rerender (canned sequences in a movie).

If only Leviathan came out before the Extended cut...where as in fact it came out after. Also you have some quaint ideas as to how Bioware work if you think they needed to hire on staff again, given they're an ongoing studio.

Replacing one Deus ex Machina with another one wouldn't live up to the gigantic expectations people had. Which includes the crazy notion that "every choice you made mattered".

@warxsnake said:

@Kadayi said:

@warxsnake said:

Original Ending is fine Original Ending + Leviathan would have been ideal Extended Ending is a turd that should have never been made and Bioware should have never ever buckled under retarded fans' demands.

Both the EC & Leviathan effectively round out the story and provide more context. If it wasn't for the backlash we probably wouldn't have gotten Leviathan at all (with it's massive reaper info dump) but likely something more akin to Omega.

Errrrm no Leviathan would have released the way it has regardless of fan feedback. You can't create DLC like that, from scratch, in a couple of months; there's tons of work that goes into that type of DLC (its not just a weapons or skins pack). Bioware most certainly did not go "oh shit, some assholes on reddit are angry, here's a few million dollars, lets hire everybody again, testers, lighting artists, modelers, animators, level designers, VO actors, let's come up with new vehicles and gameplay, turn on the mocap studio and let's do this DLC" game development does not work like that, if you think that's how it happened, you need to do some more research into game development. DLC (in this case extension DLC, again, not weapon or skin packs) usually gets started before a game is released, around the end of beta phase and when the game is in cert submission, when the game is content-complete as it gives the DLC team enough of a buffer to work and release a few months after the release of the core game. The only thing created as a result of idiot fans is the reworked ending, because its something easy to redo/rerender (canned sequences in a movie).

If only Leviathan came out before the Extended cut...where as in fact it came out after.

@warxsnake said:

That doesn't mean anything at all. Again, DLC is planned sometimes years in advance, more specifically, in parallel during conception of the core game. I've worked on DLCs of similar size. To reiterate, redditors/gaffers had NOTHING to do with Leviathan DLC.

And yet Bioware were able to churn out the EC (which was completely new content) in very little time at all. Kind of puts your entire argument into the reject bin tbh.

@warxsnake said:

That doesn't mean anything at all. Again, DLC is planned sometimes years in advance, more specifically, in parallel during conception of the core game. I've worked on DLCs of similar size. To reiterate, redditors/gaffers had NOTHING to do with Leviathan DLC.

And yet Bioware were able to churn out the EC (which was completely new content) in very little time at all. Kind of puts your entire argument into the reject bin tbh.

 The only thing created as a result of idiot fans is the reworked ending, because its something easy to redo/rerender (canned sequences in a movie).

Prabably not, one of my issues with the end was the whole.. Synthetics and Organics can never get along, negating all of what I had done with the Geth/ Quarians, but then for me that ending sequence had much deeper issues..

First I should make it clear that I didn't dislike the ending. I was disappointed but I didn't dislike it. It simply was.

Having played through the Leviathon DLC it didn't add anything to the story to me. At the end you get the same info dump as you got from Leviathon it's just that it is more sudden and vague. It was still clear that there were beings who came before the Reapers who created an AI that was charged with coming up with a way to keep organics from creating synthetics that would kill the organics. I knew that the star kid was a manifestation of that AI and that Shepherd had thrown a wrench in this whole 'solution' machine.

The only thing the Leviathon DLC added was that it explained who the beings who were already mentioned were and that they were killed by the AI because they were morons and didn't think through this scenario. The DLC made me think the precursor beings were idiots. That's all. It is utterly meaningless to me in terms of the ME story as a whole. It didn't change the ending. It didn't make it better or worse. And, most importantly of all, it didn't fix all of the gameplay problems ME 3 had.

I would've accepted the ending as it is with the Extended Cut and Leviathan had they come with the box in March, yes.

I think it would have helped certainly. Watching them play the Leviathan DLC I really did enjoy that there was at least some sort of explanation of where the reapers came from. What I hated most about the ending was that the star child was so out of the left field. With the Leviathan DLC it makes more sense.

I don't think it would have made the ending perfect or anything, but it would have helped the fact that it was so 'out there'. When I first saw the ending I thought it was just some sort of mystical mumbo-jumbo which I didn't like -- knowing that the star child was just a projection made more sense.

No.

A Deus Ex Machina is still an autistic child granting wishes.

People act as if there is this one thing that offends everyone equally, but it's just not true.

Some people think the ending is fine, some people think the ending is good or great. Some people hate it, some people don't care, some are unhappy but can live. Problems with the end range from not liking the sequence with the star child, some don't like not having their choices taken in to account, some don't like the state of the universe after the choice, some don't like how shoddy it was put together, some don't like the lack of effort put in with having the same cutscene for all endings just in different colours.

It does the game a great disservice by exclaiming they messed up one thing that pissed everyone off. It's so much more than that and allows everyone to have their own problems with the game. I thought it was fine, and I think the extended cut went on to make it great. That's my view. The DLC just adds to it. It doesn't fix it, I really don't think it was created to 'fix' it, like Jeff seems to think may be the case. It's information I would have liked to be there though. It makes you think differently.

@warxsnake said:

@Kadayi said:

@warxsnake said:

That doesn't mean anything at all. Again, DLC is planned sometimes years in advance, more specifically, in parallel during conception of the core game. I've worked on DLCs of similar size. To reiterate, redditors/gaffers had NOTHING to do with Leviathan DLC.

And yet Bioware were able to churn out the EC (which was completely new content) in very little time at all. Kind of puts your entire argument into the reject bin tbh.

Do you even bother to read the fucking posts of the people you argue with?

@warxsnake said:

The only thing created as a result of idiot fans is the reworked ending, because its something easy to redo/rerender (canned sequences in a movie).

Or are you just that fucking dense?

No. I actually do research and know my subject. What's your excuse?

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect_3:_Extended_Cut

There's a lot more going on there than some simple CGI changes as you purport.

Also if anything the original DLC that Bioware planned to release before the furor over the ending was probably 'Omega' especially given that Walters had worked on the 4 part comic for Dark Horse that featured Aria and pimped it with the ME3 release: -

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect:_Invasion

Given the nature of what Leviathan is all about, namely delivering a massive info dump to try and sweeten/contextualize the games ending (the very thing many people had problems with) it seems frankly nonsensical that this would of been something that was somehow 'in the works' before the backlash to be honest. If everyone had been happy/accepting of the original ending, it would of felt incongruous much like the appearance of midi-chlorians in Star Wars as a means to to explain 'the force'.

@warxsnake said:

@Kadayi: Because I have friends who have worked on Leviathan as early as April '12

April being after this statement about the ME3 ending back in March: -

http://blog.bioware.com/2012/03/21/4108/

Building on their research, Exec Producer Casey Hudson and the team are hard at work on a number of game content initiatives that will help answer the questions, providing more clarity for those seeking further closure to their journey. You’ll hear more on this in April. We’re working hard to maintain the right balance between the artistic integrity of the original story while addressing the fan feedback we’ve received. This is in addition to our existing plan to continue providing new Mass Effect content and new full games, so rest assured that your journey in the Mass Effect universe can, and will, continue.

Number of game content initiatives.

@Galiant said:

My opinion: Ending is fine, DLC enhances backstory but not necessary. Moving on.

Totally agree. Only children and people without imagination bitched about the ending.

I saw the twist on the GB game of the year video and my answer is absolutely.

I don't think it would have completely saved the game - it would still be full of bland levels, kinda boring firefights, and cheesy dialogue - but yes, some better explanation and some better backstory would have done wonders for the ending.

All that said, I think that in order to push Mass Effect 3 from "OK" to "good" territory they would have to restructure massive parts of the game's plot. Most importantly, I don't think the invasion of Earth should have happened until the end of the second third or so of the game. I don't think that should have been the first thing that happened.